Dear Storyteller,

The Dear Storyteller, Podcast is finishing season one this week by igniting a revolution. Joined by special guest Alicia Curtis, The team open a can of worms into how to best support the revolutionary leaders of tomorrow. We talk about the importance of guidance from people who have walked the walk, as well as Alicia's own passion for leadership which started at the age of 12. We discuss the growing role of grassroots and community leadership in moving society forward as well as the challenge of listening to opposing views with empathy and compassion.

This week, we sit down with Paul White, CEO and Founder of the most awarded gin company in Australia: West Winds Gin. What began in 2010 with a love of gin, a distillery course, and a sizeable investment in equipment; has now grown to selling over 100,00 bottles a year. White discusses his love of uncovering unique flavour combinations. From Australian bush tomatoes and sea parsley, to creating the first spirit in the world that includes filtered seawater! James and Mike get to the heart of why White decided to branch away from software engineering to running a multi-award-winning gin company.

Nothing’s hotter right now than the topic of climate change – well except for the earth’s surface (sorry). The team behind ClimateClever, Dr Vanessa Rauland and Alexander Karan, join us this week to chat about their app which has turned 30 Australian schools into climate neutral examples of how we can be the change that the world needs. With a rap sheet that proves a $30 per student saving and a total of 50,000 new trees planted, ClimateClever chat about the need for good design, immediate feedback, and why savings are so important when it comes to saving the planet. James and Mike chat with the duo about their new community product launching soon and how they’ve made climate action possible on a local level. Because, like we all know, government action is less than inspiring and as James says, all change begins locally.

This week, we speak to the incredible women responsible for Empowering Chicks, a candle company that donates ONE HUNDRED PERCENT (yep, it deserves caps) of profits to One Girl; an organisation ensuring that girls in Sierra Leone and Uganda receive an education. When Louise Garland learnt of the struggles facing girls and women in developing countries, she didn’t shy away from hard-to-stomach statistics or unfathomable imagery, she did something. She began a candle business that is now a national success. So, why candles? From distribution channels and product scaling to outsourcing, packaging, and brand storytelling; James and Mike unpack Garland’s business learnings and find out that she’s learnt more about business in the last three years with Empowering Chicks than she did in a previous 20-year branding career!

Jeremy Chetty, one of the four co-founders of Student Edge, gives us insights into his journey from an archetypal start-up (minus the parents' garage office) and into a platform that now has over 1 million users and 25% of the Australian student population actively engaged. Oh, and did we mention that they got there without a business plan? If you’ve been a student somewhere between 2003 and now, you’ll know about Student Edge and probably thanked them for a discount on a meatball sub or ten. But, what gets Chetty up in the morning is a problem he sees repeated in schools over and over again – young people being asked to make huge career decisions while they’re still figuring out how to navigate their social lives. Chetty believes relieving that pressure from young people holds the key to them becoming happier and more productive adults.

This time we’re turning the lens inwards. James Lush overcomes his discomfort at being interviewed and tells his own story as the founder of Lush - The Content Agency and how his childhood curiosity gene has driven a forever passion of story-extracting. Having conducted 25,000 interviews throughout his career in media and broadcasting, Lush speaks about the best stories he’s uncovered and how they’re able to offer something different rather than just contributing to the banal noise that’s already out there. Sure, a lot of people live rich lives but only a handful learn to tell their story in a way that makes others feel something. Because, as James puts it, if we don’t feel, we won’t act.

Is your business a vitamin or a painkiller? With the growing saturation of new apps, start-ups, and internet entrepreneurs; how did Tyler Spooner move his first mobile app, Feed Me, from a ‘nice to have’ to the ‘don’t take it away from me’ painkiller that is now UnoCart and UnoMoney? Sure, there are the standard elements of ease-of-use, a gap in the market, and a David vs Goliath narrative against conglomerate supermarkets. But Spooner says that his methodology hung on two things: customer feedback and problem solving. With international distribution on his 12-month business plan, this story also offers a unique insight into Perth’s ecosystem of new thinkers and the responsibility investors have to pay it forward.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with a business idea that just couldn’t quit? That was the case for SpacetoCo - cofounder Jeremy Hurst back in 2017 when he contacted Daniel McCullen and Daniel Franco with an idea to revolutionise the way we use space. In this episode we discuss the value of understanding user experience, how key partnerships have driven SpacetoCo’s substantial growth and why space is so key to the sustainability of our cities and towns. We also catch up on what the lads have been up to since their success on Shark Tank.